Start-up Search Costs
利用零售汽油市场的自然实验，发现消费者搜索激励的暂时性大幅冲击会导致搜索行为持久增加，揭示了一种新型搜索成本：启动成本，这对标准搜索模型提出了挑战。
Workhorse economic models used for studying the market impacts of search frictions assume constant search costs: individuals pay the same cost to obtain price information each time they search. This paper provides evidence on a new form of search costs: start-up costs. Exploiting a natural experiment in retail gasoline, we document how a temporary, large exogenous shock to consumers’ search incentives leads to a substantial, permanent increase in price search. A standard search model fails to explain such history dependence in search, while it follows directly from a model with a one-time up-front cost to start searching.